


Revolt Inside Me

by viewingcutscene



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Light BDSM, Lyrium Withdrawal, M/M, Switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 13:35:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4307043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viewingcutscene/pseuds/viewingcutscene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen's struggles with his decision to quit lyrium; Iron Bull gives him what he needs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revolt Inside Me

“Tell me,” Bull said. Cullen heard the desk creak under the warrior’s weight as he leaned against it. He could picture him perfectly, arms crossed over a scarred bare chest, one ankle hooked behind the other. Cullen shivered all over like a fly-stung horse. Sweat pasted the blindfold to his eyelids, and red lightning was zipping back and forth through the darkness in his head. “Tell me about the lyrium.”

Cullen shook his head, pressing his sweaty cheek to the pillow underneath him, trying to find a cool spot. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. What does it feel like?”

“It hurts…” He heard Bull click his tongue, disappointed. “It’s like demons eating my bones, needle sharp teeth leaving them weak and fragile. I feel like I’m a million years old.” Saying even this much exhausted him, but a hand cupped the back of his head, lifted a cup of something cool and sweet to his mouth. Cullen drank, and sighed.

“Ever since I cut back to half-doses, I hear a terrible racket in my head, like a great melee. Each time the swords kiss, sparks flying and steel sliding against steel, it drowns out the world.” Even as he spoke, the din grew louder, a great roaring like a hungry beast. It beat against his ears, tossing him to and fro in a stormy sea of pain, until two bands of steel caught his wrists and held them tight.

“Does the lyrium take hold of you like this?” Bull whispered in his ear, his breath cool against the sweat on Cullen’s jaw. “Grab you so tightly, you cannot move?”

Without waiting for an answer, Bull wrapped something rough - hempen cord, mayhap - around Cullen’s wrists, lashing them tightly. He felt the pulse thundering through his palms, pressed together above his head. The room was drafty, and alternating blasts of cold air through the gaps in the masonry and heat from the candles stirred the hair at his temples.

“Are you paralyzed with it?” Bull asked, fingers nimble at Cullen’s ankles. “Does the craving make you swoon like an Orlesian noble at a scandalous play?”

Tears leaked from Cullen’s eyes, joining his sweat in soaking the blindfold. He hated crying, more than anything. The mages never cried… the circle mages, they… the ropes at his feet drew tight with a jerk, scraping the skin, and he hissed. His thoughts scattered like dandelion seeds. He took a deep breath to gather them, and - whoof! The air was pressed out of him as Bull leaned on his torso, elbows digging into his ribs and hips. Maker have mercy, the man was using his whole weight!

“Does the lyrium ride you so? Pinning you till you can’t breathe for wanting it?”

Vision sparkling, Cullen still had enough air to snort lightly. Was it the lyrium they were still talking about? Either way… “Yess…” he breathed, a bare whisper in the dark night.

In a trice, the weight was gone and Cullen drew in a gasping breath as a knife nicked cool and close to his skin so the ropes fell away. The bed creaked under Bull’s weight as he put his hands on either side of Cullen’s face, calloused thumbs on the stubble of his jaw, and lifted the blindfold off. Bull was very close, his eye serious as he pressed his forehead to Cullen’s.

“Don’t you think,” Bull said, pausing to kiss him, softly, “that it was time you took the reins?”

Something seized Cullen, a hot wrenching twist deep inside. The battle in his head paused over it, swords failing to meet in mid-air, and the whole wretched army melted away like fog in the sun. He seized Bull’s chin in his hands, fingers hard as iron. “Yes. It is.”

Cullen twisted his wrist, turning Bull’s head aside and kissed him savagely on the jaw, the neck, the scarred shoulder. He ran a thumb over the leather eyepatch, scraping a nail over it with a sound like a striking match, and Bull shuddered, but did not stop him. Yes, he could strip the man if he wanted to, remove even the smallest scrap of dignity. Knowing he could was enough for Cullen, and so his hand moved on, fitting gently around Bull’s thick neck like a gorget. Scraps of rope littered the blankets, digging roughly into his knees where he knelt beside Bull, but Cullen didn’t move them. He let the irritation flow through him, the way he would take a wound in battle, and adrenaline swept the pain away, along with the lingering fog of lyrium withdrawal, leaving something primal and powerful behind. His cock throbbed, and he rubbed it against Bull, who arched like a cat at the touch.

“Roll over,” he said, his voice rough. Cullen stood up, and paced around the bed, adjusting the qunari warrior until he was satisfied. He lingered particularly over raising Bull’s ass into the air, as Bull grabbed fistfuls of sheets, breathing hard through his nose.

“Will you pick an angle, and get on with it?” Bull said, strangled between amusement and lust. Cullen answered him with a playful slap on the ass, causing Bull to yelp with surprise.

“Different when it’s someone else’s hand on the paddle, isn’t it?”

“Awfully big talk for someone half crippled by the sight of my dick only a few months ago, Rutherford,” he growled.

Cullen ran his fingertips over the knobs of Bull’s spine, enjoying the view. “Are all subs so mouthy?” he asked. “I’ve a mind to put yours to better use - ah!” He caught a horn to keep the man from turning to oblige. The alien touch of it, smooth and hard, excited him even more. “Don’t you dare, not after I finally have you where I want you.”

“Do you?” Bull asked.

“Want you?” Cullen kept a hand on Bull’s ass as he climbed back onto the bed. “Oh yes.” He used a knee to slide Bull’s legs a little further apart. There. Perfect. The man was like a granite statue in the candlelit, muscles held rigid against the unfamiliarity of the role.

Cullen raised himself up, drawing his cock along the inside of a thigh. When he got to the ass, however, Bull tensed, turning his head slightly towards the nightstand. A jar of oil glimmered in a ruby phial next to the headboard.

“Do you yield? Shall the word be katoh, still?” Bull lifted his chin, and shook his head. Cullen rapped him lightly on the dimple where his spine met his ass. “Stubborn fool.” Like before, Cullen knowing he could, if he wanted to, was more than enough, and he leaned over to snag the phial from the table. He drizzled a thin, golden line over Bull’s back, and pooled some more into his hand. And paused. Bull squirmed beneath him as the oil tickled, trickling down the crack of his ass. With a shout, Cullen tossed the oil jar to the floor, ran his slick hand over his cock and pushed into Bull.

The groan Bull made almost - almost - did Cullen in immediately. He bit his tongue hard enough to taste blood, and the feeling receded. Everything was new, and different, and he was going to enjoy it like it was his last fuck on earth. He wrapped his arms around Bull’s waist, digging his fingers into the soft skin above the hips. Cullen paused for breath, when a wet snowball wormed through a crack in the roof, and plopped down his bare back. The shock of it drove him forward, deep into Bull, who gave another deep moan, but the snow had done its work, and Cullen was able to settle into a steady rhythm of thrusting.

He couldn’t get enough of the sensation - he went deep, feeling his balls touch Bull’s, sending a shivery prickle of goosebumps from his stomach to his knees. He went shallow, closing his eyes and feeling the tight ring slip back and forth over the head of his cock. Cullen alternated between fast and slow thrusts, while Bull’s stomach tightened beneath his fingers, the muscles like stone underneath hints of a fondness for beer.

Too soon, it seemed, Cullen could no longer hold himself to shallow, or slow. He went deep, and fast, one hand splayed just below Bull’s neck, the other hand curled around Bull’s twitching dick. The qunari was making little uh-uh-uh noises, barely audible above the sound of sweaty flesh meeting. Cullen closed his eyes, seeing only darkness, shot through with a thin icicle of blue. The lyrium in his blood, keening a thin wail of defeat. He closed his fist over the frail thing, shattering it into dust. Light shot through him, molten from his head to his toes, and he opened his eyes to see Bull lower his head to the pillows, give a strangled shout, as his came in Cullen’s fist, soaking the sheets and his chest alike.

Cullen dragged his nails over Bull’s back as he thrust one last time, curling around the feeling of hard, round ass against his hips, sharing that molten heat. Every time the waves slowed, neared the end, he was seared with another pulse. Each one sent him forward, grabbing and gasping. Bull just moaned softly into the pillow, clutching the mattress like a life raft. Cullen slowed… stopped… he started to speak, but then tilted forward, raspy stubbled scraping against Bull’s back as he slipped into sleep. Bull lifted his head, and saw his commander dead asleep. No twitches, or mutters. No screams. With a muffled groan, he pillowed his face in his arms and tried to sleep without movement.

Dawn broke and the day began, till neither of them could ignore the slashes of sun through the cracks in the wall. Unable to shake Cullen awake without dislocating a shoulder, Bull wiggled his ass gently to try and wake him.

“Don’t worry,” came a muffled groan somewhere between his left cheek and his thigh, “no one enters any room in Skyhold without knocking these days.” Bull huffed a laugh. “Still… I suppose time and tide wait for no man. No matter how well hung and well fucked he might be.”

Cullen sat up, displaying sandy tufts of hair under his arms as he stretched the last kinks from his back. “Aside from the crude sleeping position, I feel marvellous,” he said.

“That’s great, _kadan_ ,” said Bull. He rolled a shoulder, experimenting. Better warm up first before heading out to the fields.

Cullen squinted at him. “Did you know it would work when you set me loose last night? You didn’t, did you?”

“I didn’t think it would hurt,” Bull said with a small smile. “I’m glad it did work, though. You been around long enough, and you get a decent sense for how power works. It was true enough in the _ben-hassrath_ , and it’s true enough in bed. I suppose now I know it’s true enough in lyrium addiction, too.” He reached under his eyepatch to scratch an itchy spot on the scar there. “Y’know, maybe I should start selling my services to those trying to leave the Templar order.”

“Next you’ll be suggesting you can just fuck Samson into sanity,” Cullen suggested drily.

“Stranger things have happ-“

“Don’t you dare!”

 

Strategy that morning at the War Table was one of the most efficient meetings they’d had in months. Bull left Skyhold, slinging a shield over his back, to the sound of Cullen and Leliana laughing as they teased Josephine, and grinned.


End file.
